Seven clubs.
Seven reasons.
£466.

The 4 iron is where most sets quietly stop working for club golfers. A 20.5° head with a normal cavity needs speed you probably do not have to launch properly, so it turns into a bag ornament.

The 01 is hollow through the head with the weight pulled low and back, and the face is thin enough to behave more like a small metal wood than a blade. Ball speed goes up, the flight starts higher, and the shot lands steeper instead of running through the back of the green.

This is the bit that decides whether a cheaper set is a bargain or a mistake. Plenty of budget irons save money on the two things you actually touch and feel: the shaft and the grip.

The 01 comes stock with KBS Tour Lite steel shafts in regular or stiff, and Lamkin Crossline grips. Those are not house-brand substitutes. They are the same components specified on sets sitting on the rack at a four-figure price.

Shaft

KBS Tour Lite

Grip

Lamkin Crossline

Swing weight

D2

Finish

Chrome plated

A £1,200 set is not £1,200 of golf club. It is a head, a shaft, a grip, and then a distributor margin, a retailer margin, a tour staff bill, a television budget and a launch campaign, all stacked on top before you pick it up.

Caley sells direct instead of through shops. There is no middle layer to fund, and no tour player on a retainer. What that removes is the markup, not the club.

Same set, this week: £466, down from £549 for the Open Championship sale.

Middle of the face is easy. Every iron ever made is fine out of the middle. The set you want is the one that keeps a thin one out of the toe somewhere useful.

The 01 has a 79.5mm blade length and an 8mm top line, so there is more face to hit, and each head is weighted individually so launch and spin stay in the same window from the 4 iron down to the pitching wedge. The sole has a pre-worn leading edge and relief on the trailing edge, which is the difference between the club digging on a wet lie and gliding through it.

This matters more than people admit. Cheap clubs usually announce themselves: heavy paint fill, a badge across the cavity, a logo the size of a beer mat.

The 01 is chrome, clean and quiet, with a small ✖ on the toe and the model number stamped on the hosel. Standing over it you get a mid-size head with a confident top line and 3.4mm of offset in the 7 iron, which is enough to help without looking like a shovel.

1,424 reviews on this set alone, averaging 4.84. Over 8,000 across the range. Independent YouTube reviewers have put the 01 on a launch monitor without being paid to like it.

The most useful review we have is from a golfer who did not believe the other reviews:

And four independent video reviews, none of them ours:

Buying irons you have never hit, from a brand you met on Facebook, is a fair thing to hesitate over. So the trial is not a returns window on an unopened box. Play them.

Take them to the range, take them round your own course, hit them off your own lies. If after 60 days they are not better than what is in your bag now, send them back for a refund or store credit. If anything is faulty at any point, we post a replacement free.